Q16 - The current proposal to give college

[willaminic]

Hey, i was a bit confused by Answer A, i mean the argument is pointing out the flaw of this proposal, why is it about the supporters? can anyone explain to me? I pick C though

[maryadkins]

You're right that the argument in the stimulus is about the proposal and that it shouldn't be accepted--but I want to challenge you that the argument is pointing out the flaw of the proposal. Does it?

It tells us that the students supporting the proposal will never be satisfied with it--but does it gives us any reason why?

Also, make sure to note that the question itself is asking us to find the flaw in that argument--not the flaw in the proposal (which the person arguing doesn't like!). So there's a lot of negativity to keep track of, here, which can be tricky.

The core is:

students supporting the proposal will never be satisfied -->

the proposal should be abandoned

If we try to anticipate the gap in this argument, we notice that the argument doesn't give us any standards for determining when or why to abandon a proposal. It assumes that because something is true of one group of students (the students supporting it), it should be ditched.

(A) identifies the gap by noting that all of the evidence for the conclusion in this argument is about the students supporting it and what's going on with them. This doesn't provide us with any standards for figuring out when and why a proposal should be abandoned--except to ASSUME that when students supporting a proposal won't be satisfied, it should be dropped. That's a flaw.
(B) is incorrect because the premises are not assuming the conclusion to be true--the students could be unsatisfied and slacking off in the ways the author describes without assuming the proposal shouldn't be adopted.
(C) is incorrect because even if we defined "satisfied", the major flaw in the argument would not be fixed. What if it read, "The students who are supporting the proposal will never be pleased enough to stop pushing for another proposal." We still have the same issue--the author assumes that whether to abandon the proposal or not is exclusively about the feelings of the students supporting it.
(D) is incorrect because we have no other proposal to compare this one to--if the author has distorted it, we don't know it!
(E) is incorrect because the author isn't using "student" in multiple or ambiguous ways.

Let me know if you still need help!

Mary

[tamwaiman]

The core is:

students supporting the proposal will never be satisfied -->

the proposal should be abandoned

If we try to anticipate the gap in this argument, we notice that the argument doesn't give us any standards for determining when or why to abandon a proposal. It assumes that because something is true of one group of students (the students supporting it), it should be ditched.

Let me know if you still need help!

Mary

Hi Mary I want to confirm one question.
It is likely that the author wants to provide some evidences after stating that the proponents are not satisfied. However, these evidences are too weak -- one/some/several -- to support the argument, right?

Thank you.

[maryadkins]

That's right. It's very weak evidence (some, several...). And it's just discussing one group of students.

[WaltGrace1983]

I understood the flaw in this one but I picked the wrong answer. I picked (C). I originally picked (A) but I thought that "avoiding the issue" was too strong of language. I still don't understand how "avoiding the issue" is right.

Also, how do we tell if defining a term is critical or not?

[ohthatpatrick]

"Avoids the issue" does sound a bit strong, but it's common language for them to use when an author addresses the person who made an argument rather than addressing the argument itself.

The issue here is:
"Should we give college students a broader choice in planning their own courses of study"?

Addressing the issue would mean exploring the pro's and con's of giving college students more choice, and weighing these advantages and disadvantages against each other to determine whether the proposal seems to be a net gain or a net loss.

Giving us information about who proposed this plan is NOT addressing the issue in any way. They're not enumerating the pro's or con's of the proposal or helping us to weigh those against each other.

So it's fair to say that nothing the author said actually addressed the issue.

In terms of (C), I don't think I've ever seen this type of answer be correct. Since LSAT isn't testing us on outside knowledge, it doesn't ever expect us to criticize an author based on a faulty definition.

Answer choice (E), which indicates that the same term was used in two DIFFERENT ways (uses two different definitions), will sometimes (but rarely) be a correct answer.

We know that "satisfied" isn't critical if we correctly perceived the true flaw of this argument.

The author is trying to shoot down a proposal.

Why? What's wrong with the proposal?

The people supporting the proposal are stupid-heads (paraphrasing).

Boom. That's an illegal move. (C) is about the nitty-gritty of what the author actually said about the people supporting the proposal, but that's beside the point. Our gripe with this author is that he discussed the people supporting the proposal rather than the proposal itself.

Hope this helps.

[einuoa]

I have a question on answer choice E, I picked it because I thought the author is equivocating 'students' from students supporting the proposal with the some students who haven't done this and that, in which case the author is saying that those two groups are the same when we don't know that they are, or they might really be just the minority.

Can equivocation in this case not be used in that way? Does it have to be used in the context of a term shift, such as apples = fruits sort of thing?

[tommywallach]

Hey Einuoa,

I'm not sure you know what the word equivocate means. It means "use ambiguous language to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself to one side or the other." I think you seem to think it means something else. Equivocating is this:

"Do you want to go to the movies?"

"I like the movies. However, it is pretty late."

That's equivocating, because the second person there is talking on both sides of the issue.

-t

[WaltGrace1983]

Hey Einuoa,

I'm not sure you know what the word equivocate means. It means "use ambiguous language to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself to one side or the other." I think you seem to think it means something else. Equivocating is this:

"Do you want to go to the movies?"

"I like the movies. However, it is pretty late."

That's equivocating, because the second person there is talking on both sides of the issue.

-t

Tommy,

I thought "equivocating" could also be "falsely equating." Is that just completely wrong? I remember one question about retirement and the conversation looks like this:

"I heard that Person X retired from Company Y, but I have seen him working for another company. That's not retirement!"

Wouldn't that also be equivocal language as it equates "retirement" from a company with "retirement" in general? I guess that would be "no?" Do you have any stimuli that uses equivocal language? I don't remember any off the top of my head.

[tommywallach]

Yep, that's 100% wrong! : )

-t

[WaltGrace1983]

So I am returning to this question with fresh eyes and I see it much more clearly now. So if we have an ad hominem or an appeal to authority argument, are those avoiding the issue in a similar way that this one does?

Anytime that you don't analyze the merits of an argument/proposal/issue/etc. but rather analyze the merits of those that support it/deny it, are you "avoiding the issue?"

[tommywallach]

Hey Walt,

Yeah, I'd say that's a fair generalization to make. And anyone who disagrees with me is a jerk! (See what I did there?)

-t